October 23, 2012

It has been a while since my last post.  That is a sign of how busy things have been in the lab(and a personal battle with a cold virus).

In the last two weeks, Sixth Grade has been studying Plate Tectonics.  They used the cracked shells on hard boiled eggs to model what happens as the plates move around.  Chocolate pudding cups and graham crackers were used to model eruption of lava in sea floor spreading.  Looking at the cross section of an apple gave them a representation of the layers of the Earth.  Using cut outs of the continents, students moved the "plates" on Earth as they would through time.  Today they watched a demonstration of the impact of heat on the movement of fluids, this modeled the movement of magma in the Earth's mantle.  Next it is on to the study of earthquakes.

Fifth Grade was in the lab today for an introduction to atomic structure.  They used tiddlywinks of different colors to represent the location of subatomic particle in an atom.  The terms they used were atom, atomic number, atomic mass, atomic nucleus, proton, neutron and electron.

Last week Fourth Grade used the new Vernier Heart Rate probes and Lab Quest to explore how their heart rate changes with activity (or lack of activity). The spent some time getting acquainted with the device and preparing their hypothesis and data table, then Mr. Weaver guided them through the data collection portion during PE.  Students each selected which activity to do and recorded their heart rate before and after that activity.

After school, STEM Club has been investigating a variety of things including magnetism, legos and lego robotics, worms, frogs, lizards, guinea pig and rabbit, pond water, rubber band rockets, zing wings and design drawings.  One group of students have been exploring prosthetic limbs.  The even had a science sleepover and assembled a model of a prosthetic arm, complete with straw fingers that bend at the "joints".  With the help of their parent they viewed a video tour of a local prosthetic manufacturer.

Last Thursday I forgot to cover the frog cage after STEM Club.  When I returned Saturday, after recovering from my virus,  I discovered the frog had escaped.  I thoroughly searched the room with no luck.  I cam to the conclusion that it was stuck behind a wall and most likely dead.  This morning during Geometry class a couple students noticed movement by the recycling collection container and alerted me.  There was the frog hiding behind a plastic bag.  It is now safely back in the aquarium.